Bruno Mars is pop’s ul­ti­mate party boy with hit ‘24K Magic’

While the world was busy danc­ing to Bruno Mars’ “Up­town Funk” at the top of 2015, the singer was par­ty­ing in the stu­dio and cre­at­ing his lat­est groovy hit.

The Grammy-win­ning star said in an in­ter­view with The As­so­ci­ated Press he wrote “24K Magic” around the time “Up­town Funk” topped the Bill­board Hot 100 chart last year. “24K Magic” de­buted at No. 5 on the Hot 100 chart this week.

The new party an­them was launched with a mu­sic video to match its cel­e­bra­tory fla­vor. So far, it’s racked up more than 46 mil­lion views on YouTube.

“You want to kick the door down in­stead of po­litely say, ‘Hey guys, check this out.’ So I think that was the whole ob­jec­tive — to make sure the vis­ual came with the song so peo­ple can know, ‘When we wrote this, this is what we felt like,’” Mars said. “When I’m per­form­ing, this is what I want you to feel like. Hope­fully ev­ery­one’s par­ty­ing with us.”

Mars per­formed the song, his 13th Top 10 hit on the Hot 100 chart, on “Satur­day Night Live” last week­end. The tune comes af­ter the mas­sive suc­cess of “Up­town Funk” with Mark Ron­son, which re­cently hit RIAA di­a­mond sta­tus and won two Grammy Awards this year, in­clud­ing record of the year.

“24K Magic” is the first sin­gle — or in­vi­ta­tion to the party as Mars puts it — for his third al­bum of the same name, to be re­leased Nov. 18. Two days later, he’ll open the 2016 Amer­i­can Mu­sic Awards with a live per­for­mance.

The singer-song­writer-pro­ducer says when he first came up with the treat­ment for the video, which fea­tures his sig­na­ture dance moves, play­ful band and col­or­ful fash­ion, he over­thought it.

“For weeks and weeks and weeks, I wanna say a year, I was think­ing about what the video’s go­ing to be ... how are we go­ing to dis­tance it from the other videos I’ve done and do some­thing spe­cial. And ev­ery time I came up with a con­cept it wasn’t what the song (was about). The song sounds like a party. So it was like, ‘Don’t try to go against the grain,’” said Mars, who co-di­rected the clip.

When the pop star was in Las Vegas, a light bulb turned on.

“I was like, ‘This is what we got to do. Fly the guys down. Turn the cam­era on.’”

Ev­ery time I came up with a con­cept it wasn’t what the song (was about)